Badger-Two Medicine

Status

Protected

Country

United States

Report By

Amy Corbin and Ashley Tindall

Thanks

Keith Tatsey of Blackfeet Community College for reviewing prior to publication.

Posted

September 1, 2001

Updated

May 1, 2007

The Badger-Two Medicine Roadless Area sits on National Forest land within the Rocky Mountain Front. Adjacent to the Blackfeet Reservation in Montana, Badger-Two Medicine is a dramatic landscape where the plains, the mountains, and two rivers meet. Buster Yellow Kidney (Blackfeet) explains the significance of the area to his people: “All of the mountains of the Badger-Two Medicine are sacred and necessary to our religion. It is not possible to name certain peaks and designate them as sacred peaks. To do so would be like asking a Christian which part of his church was most sacred, and then bulldozing everything else.” As of 2007, the issuance of new oil and gas exploration leases in the entire Rocky Mountain Front has ended. While many old leases have been retired, some “through leases” remain in Badger-Two Medicine.

History of the Conflict

Beginning in the 1970s, corporations and local Native American tribes began to fight over oil and gas drilling in the Rocky Mountain Front, a 100-mile-long stretch of mountain and grassland in northwestern Montana that is predominantly administered by the National Forest Service and the Bureau of Land Management. In the 1980s under the Reagan Administration, Chevron Corp. and Fina Oil and Chemical Co. acquired oil and gas leases to about two thirds of the Badger-Two Medicine area. Litigation and citizen pressure caused enough delay and inconvenience for the oil companies that they eventually abandoned their plans and sold off their leases to a number of smaller companies.

During the Clinton Administration in the 1990s, these companies continued to seek permission to begin drilling, but the Department of the Interior suspended their leases until a cultural resources inventory could be completed. Local tribes lobbied vigorously to protect their sacred mountains. Meanwhile, in 1997, the Forest Service withdrew all oil and gas leases on National Forest lands along the Rocky Mountain Front, including the Badger-Two Medicine, for 10 years.

The isolation of the area and its ties to creation stories make Badger-Two Medicine an integral part of the Blackfeet religion. Teenage boys undertake vision quests on this land as they grow to adulthood. The Blackfeet believe that the Sweet Grass Hills in Badger-Two Medicine were made by the Creator out of the rocks remaining from the Rocky Mountains. The area is home to the revered bison and is a crucial winter refuge for grizzly bear, bighorn sheep and elk that enter from nearby state wildlife refuges and Glacier National Park. Drilling in the area would have significantly impacted the spiritual practices of the Blackfeet because of the noise, construction, increased human traffic and destruction of the land itself.

In 1995, the U.S. Geological Survey estimated that the amount of gas beneath the whole of the Rocky Mountain Front would meet U.S. demand for less than a month. However, throughout the Bush administration, while Republicans controlled Congress, there was enormous pressure to open up protected wilderness areas like Badger-Two Medicine and the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge areas with minuscule energy potential in order to symbolically demonstrate the administration’s push to develop domestic oil and gas sources. The process of opening up these areas began with an energy bill passed by the House of Representatives in 2002 that recommended allowing resource extraction in areas that had been “administratively withdrawn” under the Clinton and previous administrations. This bill, which did not become law, would have nullified the 1997 Forest Service decision protecting the Rocky Mountain Front. The Bureau of Land Management then spent several years investigating possible areas of the front to study for oil and gas drilling.

The Blackfeet tribal council had sold drilling leases on reservation land to oil and gas companies in an effort to deter drilling in Badger-Two Medicine. This action has made other tribes and the conservation community uneasy, but it reflects the Blackfeet tribe’s dual desires to protect their sacred land in Badger-Two Medicine and generate revenue for the community.

In December 2006, Sen. Max Baucus (D-Mont.) drafted a bill that made the 1997 moratorium on new oil and gas leases permanent. It also made retiring the existing leases easier by offering tax incentives to corporations who sell their leases to nonprofit coalitions. This is attractive to energy corporations who want to shed unprofitable or nonperforming leases without taking a huge financial loss. Baucus’ bill was added as an amendment to the Tax Relief and Health Care Act of 2006, and with the pressure of the impending Democratic majority in Congress, was able to get President Bush’s signature.

Current Status

Oil and gas exploration leases in Badger-Two Medicine still remain, but momentum is pushing companies to sell or donate the remaining leases one by one, and the Blackfeet Nation is optimistic that soon they will all be gone. The Blackleaf area of the Rocky Mountain Front is now completely cleared of old leases after the two remaining leaseholders agreed to sell in 2006. The Blackfeet and local conservationists continue to work on agreements to take leases out of circulation, to protect roadless areas from motorized recreation vehicles, and to push the Forest Service to develop a “travel management plan” for the Front.

The Blackfeet Community College completed its cultural resources inventory of Badger-Two Medicine in December 2006, expanding the area the Forest Service had previously documented as a Traditional Cultural District. The tribe has not pushed for the site’s acceptance onto the National Register of Historic Places, opting instead to pursue comanagement of the land with the Forest Service. From the Blackfeet point of view, local land management has a better chance of coexisting with their treaty rights to hunt and harvest timber. Although it is early in the planning stages, the comanagement arrangement seems possible since the Forest Service acknowledges that it lacks the funding to manage the land on its own. Cooperation between the Forest Service and the Blackfeet Nation would then serve the interests of both sides.

Lessons Learned

The victory in the Rocky Mountain Front shows the impact that a coalition of groups drawing upon common interest can have. In this case, Native American tribes, the conservation community, outdoor sportsmen, ranchers and business owners joined forces to successfully lobby Congress to change the U.S. policy on energy leases in protected areas. In addition to the decades-long support of Sen. Baucus, the Blackfeet Nation was joined by the Wilderness Society, the Montana Wilderness Association, the Montana Wildlife Federation, and Friends of the Rocky Mountain Front. The persistence exhibited by the Blackfeet Nation and their environmental allies was noteworthy. Fortunately, their efforts were given a welcome push with the change in party control in Congress in 2007.